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Today I am writing all about Jeffrey Dahmer and the horrific crimes he committed! I really hope you find this as interesting as I did.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21st 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA to Joyce Annette and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, the first of two sons.

There are two stories as to what Dahmer’s upbringing was like. The first is that Dahmer was deprived of attention, his mother refused to breastfeed him as she thought it was exhausting and irritating, she was also greedy for attention and argumentative with her husband and their neighbours. Also, his mother tried to commit suicide from an overdose of pills she had become addicted to and his father was always away from home with his university studies, so consequently neither parent devoted much time to Dahmer. However the other story is that he was doted upon growing up by both his mother and father.

Dahmer has been described as being an ‘energetic and happy child’ until just before his fourth birthday when he became ‘notably subdued’ after undergoing a double hernia surgery. He always said that his early years of family life were full of ‘extreme tension’ between his parents and he observed them constantly arguing with each other. His peers in elementary school said he was quiet and timid and a teacher on his report card described him was a ‘reserved child’ she sensed he ‘felt neglected’. Although Dahmer was reserved he did have a small number of friends.

From a very young age, Dahmer took an interest in animals, his friends later recalled that he initially collected large insects, dragonflies and butterflies and he placed them inside jars. He later started to collect animal carcasses from the roadside, occasionally accompanied by one or more of his friends. He then dismembered the animals either at home or in woodland just behind their family home. His friends said that he dismembered the animals and then stored the parts in jars in the families tool shed, he always said he was curious as to how each animal ‘fitted together’. In one case, Dahmer decapitated the carcass of a dog before nailing the animals body to a tree, he then impaled the skull of the dog upon a stake beside a wooden cross in the woodland behind his house. It is thought that Dahmer’s obsession with dead animals started at the age of four when his father removed animal bones from beneath the family home. According to his dad Lionel Dahmer, his son was ‘oddly thrilled’ by the sounds the bones made and he instantly developed a fixation for playing with and collecting animal bones.

On December 18th 1966, Jeffrey’s younger brother was born, he was allowed to choose a name, he chose David for his younger brother. In 1968, the family relocated to Bath, Ohio. In 1970, over a family meal, Jeffrey asked Lionel what would happen if the bones of the chicken were to be placed in a bleach solution. At this stage, Lionel was concerned by his sons ‘placid and lethargic’ attitude and therefore he was delighted by, what he believed was his sons scientific curiosity. Due to this, he willingly demonstrated to his son how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones. This knowledge of cleansing and preserving bones was used by Dahmer on many of the animal remains that he continued to collect.

During high school, Dahmer was seen as an outcast by his peers, many of his classmates said that they were disturbed by the fact that he drank beer and hard alcohol which he smuggled into school inside the lining of his jacket and concealed in his locker. The drinking occurred before, during and after school. This was first noted when Dahmer was 14 years old. On one occasion, a classmate recalled Dahmer consuming a cup of gin and asked him why he was drinking liquor in class, to which Dahmer casually replied ‘it’s my medicine’. However, Dahmer was observed by staff to be a polite student who was known to be highly intelligent, although one former teacher did recall that Dahmer often had a Styrofoam cup on his desk in class and that he ‘reeked of scotch’ but nobody ever questioned him about it. Classmates remembered that Dahmer would stumble drunk through the local mall, pretending to have seizures in front of strangers. One classmate recalls ‘the performance was fun to watch but more than a little frightening, for we were always a bit wary of him. He was a big guy and we had a bad feeling that if he went off, you didn’t want to be in the way’. He was also known to draw chalk outlines of bodies on the floors in the hallways of his school.

Dahmer began to experience same-sex attractions when he reached puberty, this was not something he divulged to his parents. In his early teens, he engaged in a brief relationship with another male, although the pair never had intercourse. Dahmer later admitted that he began sexually fantasising ‘about dominating and controlling a completely submissive male partner’. These fantasies gradually became ‘intertwined with dissection’.

When Dahmer was 16 years old, Dahmer had the idea of raping a particular male jogger that he found attractive whilst he was unconscious. Dahmer concealed himself in bushes on the route he had noted the jogger took, he had a baseball bat in his hands, waiting for him to run by. However, luckily for him, the jogger did not run past on that day. Dahmer claimed he never attempted to implement that plan again, he said this was the first attempt to attack another individual.

In the summer of 1978, just three weeks after graduating, Dahmer, aged only 18 years old, would go on to murder his first victim. On June 18th Dahmer picked up hitchhiker Steven Hicks who was 18 years old. Dahmer lured him to his house saying they could have a drink together. Hicks who had been hitchhiking to a rock concert agreed. According to Dahmer, after a few hours of drinking and listening to music, Hicks ‘wanted to leave’ but Dahmer ‘didn’t want him to’ so he struck Hicks twice from behind with a dumbbell. When Hicks fell unconscious, Dahmer strangled him to death then stripped the clothes from his body before masturbating as he stood above the corpse. The next day, Dahmer dissected Hicks’ body in his crawl space, he later buried the remains in a shallow grave in his backyard. Several weeks later, he unearthed the remains and removed the flesh from the bones. He then dissolved the flesh in acid and flushed the solution down the toilet. He then crushed the bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them in the woodland behind his home.

In the August, Dahmer enrolled at Ohio State University, studying business. He stayed for one term where he spent most of his time drinking, he later dropped out after just three months.

In January 1979, Dahmer enlisted in the US Army where he trained as a medical specialist. According to published reports, in Dahmer’s first year of service he was an ‘average or slightly above average’ soldier. Two soldiers claimed to have been raped by Dahmer whilst in the army. One of whom stated in 2010 that whilst stationed in Germany, Dahmer had repeatedly raped him over a 17 month period whilst another soldier believes Dahmer drugged and raped him inside an armoured personnel carrier in 1979.

Dahmer continued to abuse alcohol and his performance deteriorated and in March 1981 he was deemed unsuitable for military service and was discharged from the Army. His superiors did not believe that he had any problems that would be applicable to civilian life, therefore he received an honourable discharge, then on March 24th 1981 he was sent to South Carolina for a debriefing and was given a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country. Dahmer later said he felt as though he couldn’t return home to face his father so therefore he decided to travel to Miami Beach, Florida, later claiming he was ‘tired of the cold’. Dahmer spent the majority of his money on alcohol and was soon evicted from the motel where he was staying for not paying. He spent most evenings on the beach after working in a sandwich shop all day. He then phoned his father and asked to return to Ohio in the September of 1981.

On his return to Ohio, he initially lived with his father and stepmother and insisted in doing numerous chores around the house whilst he looked for work. However he continued to drink very heavily and only two weeks after returning he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. After unsuccessfully trying to wean his son off Alcohol, in December 1981 Dahmer’s father sent him to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin, hoping her influence and change of scenery would inspire him to stop drinking alcohol, find a job and live life as an adult. At first, he accompanied his grandmother to church, did chores, actively looked for work and followed most of her house rules, however he still continued to drink and smoke heavily.

Early in 1982, Dahmer found a job as a phlebotomist, he held this job for 10 months before being laid off. Shortly before losing his job he was arrested for indecent exposure. On August 7th 1982 at a park he was observed to expose himself to a crowd of 25 women and children.

In January 1985, Dahmer found a new job working 11pm until 7am, shortly after finding this job he was propositioned by another man whilst in a library. The stranger threw him a note offering to perform fellatio upon him. According to him, he didn’t respond to the note, however the incident is said to have stirred fantasies in his mind of control and dominance that he had developed as a teenager. He then began to regularly visit gay bars, bookstores and gay bathhouses. He also stole a male mannequin from a store, which he used for sexual stimulation before his grandmother discovered it in his closet and demanded he got rid of it. This was the first major step which lead to the things that were to come. I feel as though the note from the stranger was a huge influence on Dahmer, I’m not saying without that he wouldn’t have gone on to do what he did, but that was a huge part, it brought back all of the fantasies he had previously had and set the ball rolling sort of thing.

By late 1985, Dahmer has became a regular visitor to the gay bathhouses which he later described as being ‘relaxing places’ but during his sexual encounters he was frustrated by his partners moving during the act. In a police interview he said ‘I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of as people’. Following this, starting in June 1986 he started giving sleeping pills to partners and giving them liquor laced with sedatives and then raping their unconscious bodies. This happened approximately 12 times before the bathhouse revoked his membership so he began to use hotel rooms to continue his act.

Dahmer said shortly after his membership was revoked, he read a newspaper report regarding an upcoming funeral of an 18 year old male, he came up with a plan of stealing the freshly buried corpse and taking it home. He said that he attempted to dig the coffin up but the soil was too hard so he abandoned the pan and went home.

In August 1986 Dahmer was arrested for masturbating in front of two 12 year old boys near the Kinnickinnic River. He initially admitted the offence so subsequently was charged with indecent exposure once again. However he quickly changed his story, claiming he had been urinating and was unaware that there were witnesses so the charges were changed to disorderly
conduct and on March 10th 1987 he was sentenced to one year’s probation with additional instructions to undergo counselling.

On November 20th 1987 Dahmer encountered a 25 year old man called Steven Tuomi at a bar and persuaded him to return to the Ambassador Hotel where Dahmer had rented a room for the evening. According to Dahmer he ha no intention of murdering Steven Tuomi, he instead intended to drug and rape him as he lay unconscious. However the next morning, he woke up to fin Tuomi’s body lying beneath him on the bed, his chest was ‘crushed in’ and he was ‘black and blue’ with bruises. Dahmer also recalled that there was blood seeping from the corner of Tuomi’s mouth and his own fists and one forearm were extensively bruised. Dahmer said he had no memory of killing Tuomi and later informed investigators that he ‘could not believe this had happened’. To dispose of the body, he purchased a large suitcase and transported the body to his grandmothers house via a taxi. When he was putting the bag in the car, the driver asked him ‘what do you got in there, a body?’ To which Dahmer replied ‘Yeah I do.’ It is not known whether the driver took this as a joke or simply didn’t believe him or if any actions were taken at this point. Which I find very strange, this isn’t mentioned in many reports you read, very few reports have this incident recalled, which to me is quite a significant thing to have happened, his first admission. One week later, he severed the head, arms and legs from the torso and filleted the bones from the body before cutting the flesh into small pieces and placing them inside plastic bags. He wrapped the bones inside a sheet and hit them with a sledgehammer into splinters. This whole process took around two hours. He then put the remains in the bin, apart from the severed head. He kept the severed head for two weeks wrapped in a blanket. He then boiled the head in detergent and bleach in an effort to retain the skull, he then used this as stimulus for masturbation. Eventually, when the skull was rendered too brittle by the bleaching process, he pulverised and disposed of it. Within all of the murder charges brought to Dahmer, the murder of Steven Tuomi was not one of them as none of his remains or DNA were ever found.

Following this murder, Dahmer started to actively seek victims, most of whom he had encountered in or close to gay bars and he lured back to his grandmother’s home. He then drugged them and engaged in sexual activity with them. Once the victim’s were unconscious with sleeping pills he killed them by strangulation.

Two months after murdering Steven Tuomi, Dahmer met 14 year old Native American male prostitute James Doxtator. He lured him to his home with an offer of $50 to pose for nude photos. Once home, the pair engaged in sexual activity before Dahmer drugged him and strangled him on the floor of the cellar. Dahmer left the body there for one week before dismembering it the same way he had Tuomi. He placed all of his remains, other than his head, in the bin. He boiled the skull and again retained it before pulverising it.

On March 24th 1988, Dahmer met 22 year old Richard Guerrero outside a gay bar called The Phoenix. He lured him to his grandmother’s house on the incentive that he would pay $50 to spend the remainder of the night with him. He then drugged Guerrero with sleeping pills and strangled him with a leather strap. He then performed oral sex on the corpse. He dismembered the body within 24 hours of his murder and again disposed of his remains in the trash, again retaining the skull before being pulverised several months later.

On April 23rd 1988, Dahmer lured another young man to his house, he gave the victim drugged coffee, however Dahmer’s grandmother called ‘Is that you Jeff?’ which, ultimately ended up saving his life. Although Dahmer replied in a manner that led her to believe he was alone, she knew that he wasn’t. Because of this, Dahmer opted to not kill this victim and instead waited until he had became unconscious before taking him to the hospital.

In September 1988, Dahmer’s grandmother asked him to move out of her house because she didn’t like him bringing young men to her house late at night ad there was a foul smell from the basement and the garage which she knew was down to him. Dahmer found a one bedroom apartment where he moved into on September 15th. On the following day, Dahmer was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13 year old boy of whom he had lured back to his home on the pretext of posing nude for photographs.

In January 1989, Dahmer was convicted of second degree sexual assault and of enticing a child for immoral purposes. Sentencing was suspended until May 1989. In March, Dahmer moved back into his grandmother’s home.

Two months after his conviction and two months prior to his sentencing, whilst on ‘bail’ Dahmer murdered his fifth victim. Which I find so so strange. Why would someone who is being convicted of sexual assault free to roam the streets as normal for multiple months before being sentenced? Surely he should have been kept in prison until the sentencing was given? It is extremely upsetting to me that he continued his murder spree whilst the police and courts allowed him out after being convicted of such a serious crime. I believe the courts and police could have done so much more to stop him earlier.

His fifth victim was a 24 year old aspiring model Anthony Sears, who Dahmer met at a gay bar on March 25th 1989. According to Dahmer, he was not looking to commit a crime on this evening, however shortly before closing time that evening, Sears ‘just started talking to me’. Dahmer lured him to his grandmother’s house where they engaged in oral sex before Dahmer drugged and strangled him. The following morning, Dahmer placed his body in his grandmother’s bathtub where he decapitated him before he stripped the flesh from the body and pulverised the bones, where again he disposed of in the bin. According to Dahmer, he found Sears ‘exceptionally attractive’ and Sears was the first victim he permanently retained any body parts. He preserved his head and genitalia in acetone and store them in his work locker. When he moved to a new address he took the remains there.

On May 23rd 1989, Dahmer was sentenced to five years probation and one year in the ‘House of Correction’ with work release permitted in order for him to keep his job. He was also required to register as a sex offender. Two months before his scheduled release from the work camp, Dahmer was paroled from this regime. His five years probation began at this point. He temporarily moved back to his grandmother’s house before on May 14th 1990 he moved into his own apartment, taking Anthony Sear’ skull, scalp and painted genitals with him.

Within one week of moving into his new apartment, Dahmer killed his sixth victim. Raymond Smith was a 32 year old male prostitute whom Dahmer lured to his apartment with the promise of $50 for sex. At Dahmer’s apartment, he gave Smith a drink laced with seven sleeping pills and manually strangled him. The following day, Dahmer purchased a Polaroid camera which he took several pictures of Smith’s body in suggestive positions before dismembering him in the bathroom. He boiled the legs, arms and pelvis in a steel kettle which allowed hi to then rinse the bones in the sink. He dissolved the remainder of his skeleton, other than the skull, in a container he filled with acid. He spray painted his skull a placed it alongside the skull of Anthony Sears. It is also thought that he placed other bones from his body around his apartment as ornaments.

Around one week later, approximately May 27th, Dahmer lured another man to his apartment. However, on this occasion Dahmer accidentally consumed the drink with sedatives intended for his guest. When he woke up the following day, he discovered that the intended victim had stolen clothing, $300 and a watch. Dahmer never reported the incident to the police, however on May 29th he told his probation officer he had been robbed.

In June 1990, Dahmer lured a 27 year old acquaintance named Edward Smith to his apartment where he drugged and strangled him. This time, instead of immediately acidifying the skeleton or repeating the previous processes of bleaching, Dahmer placed Smith’s skeleton in his freezer for several months hoping it would not retain moisture. Freezing the skeleton didn’t remove moisture so he acidified the body several months later. Dahmer accidentally destroyed the skull when he placed it in the oven to dry which caused the skull to explode. Dahmer said to police that he felt ‘rotten’ about Smith’s murder as he had been unable to retain any parts of his body. Dahmer later said to police ‘it was my way of remembering their appearance, their physical beauty. I also wanted to keep… if I couldn’t keep them there with me whole, I at least could keep their skeletons’ about his motivations for photographing his victims and retaining sections of their skeletal structure.

In September 1990, less than three months later, Dahmer met 22 year old Ernest Miller. Miller agreed to accompany Dahmer to his apartment for $50 to allow him to listen to his heart and stomach. When Dahmer attempted to perform oral sex on Miller, he was informed ‘it will cost you extra’. Dahmer intended to give him sleeping pills, however he ended up killing Miller by slashing his neck, he then bled to death within minutes. Dahmer then posed the nude body for various photographs before placing him in the bathtub for dismemberment. Dahmer repeatedly kissed and talked to the severed head while he dismembered the remainder of the body. He wrapped Miller’s heart, biceps and portions of his leg flesh in plastic bags in the fridge for later consumption. The severed head was initially placed in the refrigerator before also being stripped of flesh then he painted it and coated it with enamel.

On September 24th, three weeks later, Dahmer encountered David Thomas a 22 year old at a mall and persuaded him to return to his apartment for a few drinks with additional money on off if he would pose for photographs. When arrested, in his statement Dahmer stated that he did not feel attracted to him after giving him a drink with sedatives, but he was afraid if he woke up he would be angry over being drugged, so therefore he strangled him and dismembered him, retaining no body parts. However he did photograph the dismemberment process and retained these photographs which later helped identify David Thomas’ body.

Following the murder of David Thomas, Dahmer didn’t kill anyone for almost five months, although he claims on a minimum of five occasions between October 1990 and February 1991 he unsuccessfully attempted to lure men to his apartment. He also regularly complained of feeling both anxious and depressed to his probation officer during 1990 with frequent references to his sexuality, lifestyle and financial difficulties. He also referred to suicidal thoughts on several occasions.

In February 1991 Dahmer observed 17 year old Curtis Straughter standing at a bus stop near a university. According to Dahmer he lured him into his apartment offering him money for posing for nude photographs with the added incentive of sexual intercourse. Dahmer drugged and strangled him with a leather strap and then dismembered him, he retained his skull, hands and genitals and photographed each stage of the dismemberment process.

On April 7th, less than two months later, Dahmer encountered 19 year old Errol Lindsey walking to get a key cut. Dahmer lured him to his apartment where he drugged him, drilled a hole in his skull and poured acid into it. According to Dahmer, he woke up after the experiment, which Dahmer though would induce a permanent, unresistant, submissive state, saying ‘I have a headache. What time is it?’ In response to this, Dahmer drugged him again then strangled him. He decapitated him and retained his skull then removed the flesh from his body placing the skin in a solution of cold water and salt for several weeks in the hope he could retain it, however Dahmer reluctantly disposed of it when he noted it had become too frayed and brittle.

By 1991, residents in the apartment block in which Dahmer lived repeatedly complained to the manager Sopa Princewill of the foul smell coming from Dahmer’s apartment in addition to the sounds of falling objects and the occasional sound of a chainsaw. Princewill contacted Dahmer who said the odours were caused by his freezer breaking and the contents becoming ‘spoiled’, on other occasions he said the small was because several of his tropical fish had recently died and he would take care of the matter.

On May 24th 1991 Dahmer invited 31 year old Anthony Hughes to his apartment, he was a deaf mute, so Dahmer invited him with a written request asking him to pose nude. Once in the apartment, Dahmer drugged him and strangled him. He left the body lying around the apartment for a couple of days before dismembering him.

On May 26th 1991 Dahmer seen Konerak Sinthasomphone, he approached him with an offer of money to accompany him to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. According to Dahmer Sinthasomphone – the younger brother of the boy whom he had molested in 1988 – was initially reluctant to the proposal before changing his mind and accompanying Dahmer to his apartment where the youth posed for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer drugged him into unconsciousness and performed oral sex on him. Dahmer drilled a single hole into his skull and injected acid into him. Before Sinthasomphone fell unconscious Dahmer took him into his bedroom where the nude body of Anthony Hughes was laying on the floor. Dahmer later said he believed he saw the body but did not react due to the sleeping pills he had been given. Sinthasomphone soon became unconscious, Dahmer drank several beers before leaving his apartment to drink at a bar.

In the early hours of May 27th, Dahmer returned towards his apartment to discover Sinthasomphone sitting naked on the corner of the street talking with three distressed young women. Dahmer approached them and explained that Sinthasomphone was a friend and attempted to lead him to his apartment, however the three women dissuaded Dahmer explaining they had rang 911. Two officers named John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish arrived on the scene and here Dahmer informed them Sinthasomphone was his 19 year old boyfriend and he had drank too much after an argument and he regularly behaved this way when he was intoxicated. The three women tried to indicate to the officers that he was bleeding from his buttox and that he struggled against Dahmer’s attempt to walk him to his apartment to which the officers harshly informed them to ‘butt out’ and ‘shut the hell up’ an not to interfere as the incident was ‘domestic’.

Against the protests of the three women, the officers covered Sinthasomphone with a towel and walked him to Dahmer’s apartment. To verify his claim that they were lovers, Dahmer showed the officers semi-nude pictures he had taken the night before. The officers later reported that there was a strange scent of excrement inside the apartment, the odour was from the decomposing body of Hughes. Dahmer later said that one officer ‘peeked his head around the bedroom but didn’t really take a good look’ then they left, telling Dahmer to ‘take good care’ of Sinthasomphone. I find this so so upsetting. If the officers had firstly listened to the women and secondly looked properly in the bedroom this whole thing could have been stopped way before it eventually was. The officers were rude to the women and the women had been right the whole time, they seem very incompetent of actually looking and seeing properly what was really going on. They also did no background check on Dahmer, if they had it would have revealed he was a convicted child molester under probation and could have done something about it.

Once the officers had left, Dahmer again injected acid into Sinthasomphone’s brain, this occasion proved fatal. The following day May 28th, Dahmer took a day’s leave to dismember both bodies of Sinthasomphone and Hughes. He again, retained both skulls.

On June 30th, Dahmer travelled to Chicago and he met 20 year old Matt Turner at a bus station. Turner accepted Dahmer’s offer to travel to Milwaukee for a professional photo shoot. Back at Dahmer’s apartment he drugged, strangled and dismembered Turner. He then placed his head and internal organs in plastic bags in the freezer.

On July 5th Dahmer lured 23 year old Jeremiah Weinberger back to his apartment on the promise of spending the weekend with him. He drugged him and injected boiling water through his skull which sent him into a coma from which he died two days later.

On July 15th Dahmer met Oliver Lacy, he agreed to pose nude for photographs and accompanied Dahmer back to his apartment where they engaged in sexual activity before Dahmer drugged him. Dahmer intended to prolong the time he spent with Lacy whilst alive, so after he requested a day’s absence from his workplace. He later strangled Lacy and had sex with the corpse before dismembering him. He placed his head and heart in the refridgerator and his skeleton in the freezer.

On July 19th Dahmer was told he was fired from his job, upon receipt of this news, Dahmer lured 25 year old Joseph Bradehoft to his apartment. He strangled him and left him lying on his bed covered with a sheet for two days. On July 21st Dahmer removed the sheets to find the head covered in maggots, he decapitate the body, cleaned the head and placed it in the refridgerator. He later acidified three victims from that month.

On July 22nd 1991, Dahmer approached three men and offered them $100 to post for nude photographs, drink beer and keep him company at his apartment. One of them, 32 year old Tracy Edwards accepted. Upon entering the apartment, Edwards noted a foul smell and several boxes of hydrochloric acid on the floor, Dahmer claimed to use it for cleaning bricks. Dahmer placed a handcuff upon his wrist, but unsuccessfully attempted to cuff his wrists together, he then told Edwards to accompany him to the bedroom to pose for the nude photographs. Edwards noted that there were nude male posters on the way and The Exorcist videotape was playing. Dahmer then took out a knife and informed Edwards he intended to take nude pictures of him. To appease Dahmer, Edwards unbuttoned his shirt and said he would if he removed the handcuffs and put the knife away. Edwards observed Dahmer rocking back and forth watching the TV and chanting before turning his attention back to him. He placed his head on Edwards’ chest and listened to his heartbeat. With the knife pressed against him, he informed Edwards he intended to eat his heart. Edwards repeated that he was Dahmer’s friend and he wasn’t going to run away in an attempt to prevent Dahmer from attacking him, although he had decided he was going to either jump from a window or run through the unlocked door when he had the opportunity. Edwards asked if they could sit with a beer in the living room where there was air conditioning, to which Dahmer consented. Edwards waited until Dahmer had a lapse of concentration before requesting to use the bathroom, when he rose from the couch he noted Dahmer was not holding the handcuffs, so he punched him in the face knocking him off balance and ran out of the front door.

At 11:30pm on July 22nd, Edwards flagged down two police officers. The officers noticed that Edwards had a handcuff attached to his wrist, Edwards explained that a ‘freak’ had put the handcuffs on him an asked if they could remove them. The officers’ keys failed to fit the handcuffs, so Edwards agreed to accompany the officers to the apartment where he had stated he had spent the last five hours before escaping. When they arrived at Dahmer’s apartment he invited them in and acknowledged he had indeed placed the handcuffs onto Edwards’ wrist, however he offered no explanation as to why. Edwards then told the officers that Dahmer had also threatened him with a knife and it had happened in the bedroom, Dahmer made no comment to this and told the officer, Rolf Mueller, that the key was on his bedside dresser in the bedroom. Dahmer attempted to pass Mueller to retrieve the key himself, however the second officer Robert Rauth informed him to ‘back off’.

In the bedroom Rolf Mueller noted that there was a large knife under the bed and in an open draw there were Polaroid pictures, many of which were of human bodies in various states of dismemberment. He also noted that the decor in the photos was the same a the apartment he was standing in. When Dahmer saw he was holding the Polaroids, he fought the officers in an attempt to resist arrest, however the officers quickly overpowered him, cuffed his hands behind his back and called a second car for backup. At this point Mueller opened the refrigerator to find the freshly severed head of a black male on the bottom shelf. As Dahmer lay pinned on the floor beneath Robert Rauth he turned his head towards the officers and said ‘for what I did I should be dead’.

In a more detailed search of the apartment conducted by the ‘Criminal Investigation Bureau’ they unearthed a lot of horrible things. A total of seven skulls – some painted, some bleached – were found in Dahmer’s bedroom and inside a closet. They also a collection of blood drippings in a tray at the bottom of the refrigerator plus two human hearts and a portion of arm muscle. In the freezer they found an entire torso plus a bag of human organs and flesh stuck to the ice at the bottom. Investigators also discovered two entire skeletons, a pair of severed hands, two severed and preserved penises, a mummified scalp and in a 57 gallon drum, three further dismembered torsos dissolving in the acid solution. A total of 74 Polaroid pictures detailing the dismemberment of Dahmer’s victims were found. The chief medical examiner later stated ‘it was more like dismantling someone’s museum than an actual crime scene’.

In the early hours of July 23rd 1991, Dahmer was questioned by Detective Patrick Kennedy as to the murders he had committed and the evidence that had been found in his apartment. Over the following two weeks, Kennedy and later Detective Patrick Murphy conducted numerous interviews with Dahmer, which combined totalled over 60 hours. Dahmer waived his right to have a lawyer present, adding he wished to confess all as he had ‘created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it’. He admitted to murdering 16 young men since 1987 with one further victim killed in Ohio in 1978. He also admitted to performing necrophilia with several of his victims’ bodies, including performing sexual acts with their bodies as he dismembered them in the bathtub. He also confessed to having consumed the hearts, livers, biceps and portions of thighs of several victims he had killed.

When describing the increase in his killing rate in the few months before his arrest he stated he had been ‘completely swept along’ with his compulsion to kill. When he was asked why he had preserved seven skulls an entire skeletons of two victims, he stated he had been in the process of constructing a private altar of victims’ skulls which he had intended to put on the black table in his living room where he had photographed many of the bodies of his victims. On November 18th 1991 in a police interview, when asked who the altar was dedicated to Dahmer gave a very in depth description of what he was going to design and said ‘myself, it was a place where I could feel at home’ and described it as a ‘place for meditation’. He also added ‘if this arrest had happened six months later, that’s what they would have found’.

On July 25th 1991, Dahmer was charged with four counts of murder. By August 22nd 1991 he was charged with a further 11 murders. On September 14th 1991, investigators uncovered hundreds of bone fragments in woodland behind the address Dahmer had confessed to killing his first victim. They formally identified two molar teeth and a vertebra with x-ray records of Steven Hicks. Three days later, Dahmer was charged with the murder of Steven Hicks.

Dahmer was not charged with the attempted murder of Tracy Edwards or the murder of Steven Tuomi. He was not charged with Tuomi’s murder as the District Attorney only brought charges where murder could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and Dahmer had no memory of actually committing this crime and no physical evidence of the crime existed.

On January 13th 1992 Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane to 15 counts of murder.

The trial began on January 30th 1992. He was tried for 15 counts of murder before Judge Laurence Gram. By pleading guilty on January 13th to the charges, Dahmer had waived his rights to an initial trial to establish guilt. The issue debated in the trial were to determine whether he had suffered from either a mental or a personality disorder. The prosecution claimed that ‘any disorder did not deprive Dahmer of the ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to deprive him of the ability to resist his impulses’. The defence argued that Dahmer ‘suffered from a mental disease and was driven by obsessions and impulses he was unable to control’.

Defence experts argued that Dahmer was insane due to his ‘necrophiliac drive’, the urge to have sexual encounters with corpses. The prosecution experts rejected this testifying that he was ‘without mental disease or defect’ at the time he committed the murders. They described Dahmer as a ‘calculating and cunning individual, able to differentiate between right and wrong, with the ability to control his actions’.

The trial lasted two weeks and on February 14th, both counsels delivered their closing statements to the jury. Each counsel was allowed to speak for two hours. Then just one day later, on February 15th the court reconvened to hear the verdict.

Dahmer was ruled to be sane and not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each of the 15 murders for which he was tried. Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment plus ten years with a remaining 13 counts carrying a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 70 years. The death penalty was not an option as in the State of Wisconsin the death penalty was abolished.

Three months later Dahmer was extradited to Ohio to be tried for the murder of Steven Hicks. In a court hearing lasting only 5 minutes, Dahmer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment on May 1st 1992.

For the first year of his sentence, Dahmer was placed in solitary confinement due to the concerns for his physical safety if he came into contact with other inmates.

Whilst in prison Dahmer became a ‘born again Christian’ and in May 1994 he was baptised in the prison whirlpool.

In July 1994 a fellow inmate Osvaldo Durruthy attempted to slash Dahmer’s throat with a razor embedded in a toothbrush as Dahmer returned to his cell. Dahmer suffered superficial wounds but was not serious hurt. According to Dahmer’s family, he was ready to die. He responded with comments to his mother expressing concerns for his well-being with comments such as ‘it doesn’t matter mom, I don’t care if something happens to me’.

On November 28th 1994 Dahmer left his cell to conduct his assigned work. He was accompanied by two fellow inmates Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The trio were left unsupervised in the showers of the prison gym for approximately 20 minutes and at approximately 8:10am Dahmer was discovered on the floor suffering from extreme head and facial wounds. He had been severely hit with a 20 inch metal bar. His head had also been repeatedly struck against the wall. Although he was still alive, he was rushed to a nearby hospital and was pronounced dead one hour later. Anderson also died two days later. Christopher Scarver admitted he had killed them both, he said Dahmer did not yell or make any noise when he was attacked. Scarver alleges that before murdering Dahmer he cornered him and presented him a newspaper article detailing Dahmer’s crimes and demanded that Dahmer answered whether it was true. He also said that he was revolted by Dahmer’s crimes and that he had openly been unrepentant for his crimes. He also stated that Dahmer was so disliked by his fellow inmates that he required a personal escort whenever he was out of his cell to prevent inmates attacking him and he believes the prison staff knew Scarver’s hatred for him so deliberately left them unsupervised so that he could kill him.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s dad has retired and is living with his second wife Shari, they have both refused to change their surname and have professed their love of Jeffrey despite his crimes. His younger brother David has changed his surname and lives in anonymity.

Overall I find this case so disturbing and upsetting. I think Jeffrey could have been caught a lot sooner if the police had done their job. I also find it very strange that his grandmother could smell something in her own home but never went to actually going on. To me if that was my house and my grandson was making it smell I would want to know what he was doing and go and look. I also find it very strange that the victims were so willing to just go with him, I feel like there was more to it than just him offering money or whatever. I think it was obvious from a very young age that Jeffrey wasn’t quite right, the fact that he was so interested in killing animals was a sign of that, I think his dad was oblivious even when he asked him to show him how to dispose of the chicken bones. I just think overall there were so many signs that something was wrong but nobody seemed to pick up on it. Also why were the people who were killed not reported as missing and police were not actively looking for them, surely someone would have reported them missing and the police could have linked them together? I think the fact that he was arrested and charged for a sexual assault but was still allowed to live life as normal and continue killing is also so disturbing and just wrong when it could have been stopped by keeping him in prison until his sentencing. I also find it disgusting how they tried to fight in court for a mental illness when clearly this was just a vile man with an obsession of killing and having sex with corpses. And the fact he kept parts of the bodies and wanted to create an altar in his home just freaks me out. Personally I think he was let off too easily, he wanted to die and by being killed in prison he was given that, I would have much preferred him to be alive and suffering knowing that is what he didn’t want.

Welcome to the next piece in my Crime Series. I hope you find this as interesting as I did! I’ll just jump straight into it…

Ian Brady was born in Glasgow as Ian Duncan Stewart on January 2nd 1938. Myra Hindley was born in Crumpsall on July 23rd 1942 and raised in a working class area of Manchester. In January 1961, 18 year old Myra Hindley became infatuated by Ian Brady after joining Millwards as a typist/secretary, where Brady worked in a clerical position. She began writing a diary where she detailed her fascination with Ian Brady, who she finally spoke to for the first time 6 months later on July 27th 1961. Over the months after speaking to him she continued to make diary entries however she grew increasingly disillusioned with him until December 22nd 1961 when Ian Brady asked her on a date to the cinema. Their dates following that were always a similar pattern of going to the cinema to watch an x-rated movie and then back to Myra’s house to drink German wine. Brady then began to give Hindley reading material and they then spent their work lunch breaks reading to each other from accounts of Nazi atrocities.

Myra Hindley did start to express some concern at certain aspects of Brady’s character. In a letter to a childhood friend she told her about an incident where he had drugged her but she also spoke about her obsession with him. Not long after writing the letter she asked her friend to destroy the letter. Hindley also started to change her appearance at this point, bleaching her hair blonde and applying thick crimson lipstick, trying to emulate ‘Aryan perfection’. She also started to wear clothes considered risqué such as high boots, short skirts and leather jackets.

The pair began to distance themselves and become less sociable with their colleagues. Instead they regularly went to the library borrowing books on philosophy as well as crime and torture. Hindley often hired a van as the pair had planned bank robberies, these plans came to nothing. Hindley also visited two local shooting ranges and asked to join a pistol club but as she had a poor shot and allegedly a bad temper she was told she was unsuitable, although she did manage to purchase multiple guns in this time. Strangely their minds began to wonder from crime and robberies and they started to become interested in photography. Brady often took photographs of Hindley and her dog, he then upgraded his equipment, even purchasing lights and darkroom equipment. The pair took photographs of each other than would have been considered as explicit at the time. For this to happen it was strange as it was a complete contrast to the more shy and prudish nature Hindley used to show.

Hindley claimed that in July 1963 Brady began to talk about ‘committing the perfect murder’ inspired by a novel called ‘Compulsion’ written by Meyer Levin and later adapted for the cinema about two young men who attempt to commit the perfect murder of a 12 year old boy and escape the death penalty because of their age. By this time Brady had moved in with Hindley at her Grand Mother’s house.

On July 12th 1963 the two murdered their first victim. It was 16 year old Pauline Reade. Pauline disappeared on her way to a dance at the British Railways Club. Brady had told Hindley that this was the night he was going to ‘commit his perfect murder’. He told Hindley to drive around in the van she had hired and he would follow behind on his motorcycle and when he spotted a likely victim he would flash his headlight and Hindley had to stop and offer that person a lift. It is unclear how true all of these fast are as both Brady and Hindley provided different accounts of the murder when interviewed.

Driving down Gorton Lane, Brady saw a girl walking towards them and flashed his headlight, signalling Hindley to stop, however she did not stop until she had passed the girl which caused Brady to stop next to the van and demand to know why she had not stopped when he told her to, Hindley told him that she knew the girl as Marie Ruck and she was a neighbour of her mother. So they continued and shortly after 8pm, Brady spotted a girl wearing a pale blue coat and white high heeled shoes and she was walking away from them, he signalled Hindley to stop. Hindley recognised the girl, she has attended school with Myra Hindley’s younger sister so was known to her. Reade got into the van, Hindley then asked her if she would mind helping to search for an expensive glove she had lost on Saddleworth Moor. Reade told her she was in no hurry so she would help her.

Hindley believed that as Reade was 16 years old, older than Marie Ruck, there would be less of an outcry over her disappearance rather than a child of seven or eight.

When the van reached Saddleworth Moor, Hindley stopped and Brady arrived shortly afterwards. Hindley introduced Brady as her boyfriend and said he had also came to help them search for the expensive glove.

This is where things get confusing due to the different stories from the pair. Hindley claimed that Brady took Reade onto the moor whilst she waited in the van and after 30 minutes Brady returned alone and took Hindley to the spot where Reade was lay dying. Her throat had been cut twice with a large knife, the larger of the wounds was a four inch incision across her voice box, it was cut with such force that her spinal cord was severed and the collar of Reade’s coat had been deliberately pushed into the wound. He told her to stay with Reade whilst he fetched a spade he had hidden nearby on a previous visit to the moor to bury the body. Hindley said she noticed that ‘Pauline’s coat was undone and her clothes were in disarray … She had guessed from the time he had taken that Brady had sexually assaulted her.’ However Brady claimed that Hindley was at the scene when Reade was murdered and that she also assisted him with the sexual assault. They then buried her body. They loaded the motorcycle into the back of the van and drove home. When returning home they passed Reade’s mother Joan, who was accompanied by her son Paul who were searching the streets for Pauline.

Pauline’s body was not discovered until 24 years later on July 1st 1987, 250 yards from the main road, just inches below the surface. This was after and intense search after Brady and Hindley were taken back to the moors separately in the 1980’s to help Greater Manchester police in their new search for the bodies.

The next victim was 12 year old John Kilbride, on the evening of November 23rd 1963, Myra Hindley approached John at a market in Ashton-Under-Lyne and offered him a life home, telling him his parents would be worried about him being out so late. With the added inducement of a bottle of sherry, John readily agreed to get into a car that Hindley had hired. Ian Brady was in the car as said that the sherry was at their home and they would need to make a detour to collect it, then on the way he also suggested that they take another detour to search for a glove that Hindley had lost on the moor. When they reached the moor, Brady apparently took him whilst Hindley waited in the car. Brady sexually assaulted him and attempted to slit his throat with a blade, before he fatally strangled him with a piece of string, possibly a shoelace. He was then buried in the moors, like their first victim. Again, it is unclear if these were the correct sequence of events because both Brady and Hindley have told different versions. Was Hindley there on the moors? Did she take part? Or did she really stay in the car? We will probably never know.

John’s body was found in October 1965 when police searched the moors in an investigation against Brady and Hindley.

The third victim was Keith Bennett, who was twelve years old who disappeared on the way to his grandmother’s house in Longsight, Manchester on the 16th of Junes 1964. Hindley lured him into her Mini Pick Up which Brady was sitting in the back of, by asking him for help loading some boxes, she told him she would drop him home after. She drove to a lay by on the Moor as her and Bray had arranged and Brady went off with Keith Bennett supposedly looking for a lost glove. After 30 minutes, Brady reappeared, alone and carrying a spade they had previously hidden there. When Hindley asked him how he had killed the boy, Brady told her he had sexually assaulted him and strangled him with a piece of string. Again, the true version of events may never be known, as both Hindley and Brady gave different stories.

Keith’s body to this day has never been found, even though the police have kept the case open and regularly search the moors for him. Winnie Johnson, Keith’s mother pleaded with Brady to reveal the details of where he was buried, people believe that Brady holding back the information was his last attempt at maintaining an element of control. Brady died in May 2017 before ever releasing any information, so we may never know where the body is found even though the police have extensively searched the area multiple times with no luck.

The next victim was Lesley Ann Downey, who was 10 years old. On December 26th 1964 Brady and Hindley visited a fairground in search of their fourth victim. They spotted Lesley Ann Downey on her own beside a ride, they approached her and deliberately dropped some of their shopping near her, before asking her to help them carry some of the shopping to their car and then to their home. She agreed. Once they arrived at their home, Downey was undressed and gagged. She was then forced to pose for photographs before being raped and killed, possibly with a piece of string. They also recorded her pleading before her death. Saying “don’t undress me will you”, “let me go” and “I want to see mummy”. A 16 minute recording was played in full to a silent courtroom during the pair’s trial. At another point Hindley says “Hush, hush, shut up or I will forget myself and hit you one. I will hit you one.” The another point Lesley is pleading “I want to see my mummy, honest to God. I will swear on the bible… I have got to go because I am going out with my mama.” To which Brady replied “The longer it takes you to do this, the longer it takes you to get home” referring to taking photographs. Brady also said at one point “if you don’t keep that hand down, I will slit your neck.”

Again, the stories between Hindley and Brady are different. Hindley maintained that she left the girl naked in the room after naked photographs were taken by Brady and another man and she went to fill a bath for Lesley and when she returned the girl was dead, Brady had killed her. She said in court that she had put her hands over her ears to cover the noise of Brady’s blows. However Brady stated that it was Hindley who had killed Lesley. The next morning they drove her body to the Moor where she was buried completely naked with her clothes at her feet, again in a shallow grave.

Lesley Ann Downey’s body was found on October 16th 1965 whilst officers were looking for John Kilbride’s body. Officers found an arm bone sticking out of the ground, this was Lesley’s body. Her mother was on the Moor watching police search but was not present when her daughter was found. The body of Lesley Ann Downey was still visually identifiable when it was recovered along with clothing that her mother identified to be her daughter’s.

The final victim, that we know of, was 17 year old Edward Evans. On October 6th 1965, Hindley drove Brady to Manchester Central Railway Station where he chose their next victim. After only a few minutes Brady reappeared with Edward Evan’s an apprentice engineer, he invited him to his home at 16 Wardle Brook Avenue in Cheshire, he introduced Myra as his sister.

When they arrived at their home they relaxed, drinking a bottle of wine. Later, Brady sent Hindley to fetch her brother-in-law, David Smith. He was married to Hindley’s younger sister Maureen, throughout the years Brady had been cultivating a friendship with Smith who was ‘in awe’ of him. This worried Hindley as she felt it compromised their safety having somebody else so close to them.

When they arrived at the house, Hindley told Smith to wait outside for her signal which would be a flashing light. When the signal came, Smith knocked on the door, Brady opened it and asked Smith if he has came for the ‘miniature wine bottles’. He then led Smith into the kitchen and told him he was going to collect the wine. Only minutes later, Smith heard a scream, followed by Hindley shouting for him to come and help. Smith went into the living room and seen Brady repeatedly striking Evans with the flat of an axe, he then watched him as he throttled him with an electrical cord.

Brady sprained his ankle in the struggle and the body was too heavy for Smith to carry to the car on his own, so instead, they wrapped the body in plastic sheeting and put it in their spare room. Smith agreed to meet Brady the following evening to dispose of the body. However, when he returned home, he told Maureen what he had seen and she insisted that he called the police. Armed with a screwdriver and a knife in case Brady confronted them, they went to a nearby phone box to report what he had seen.

When asked, Smith told the police the following:

“Brady opened the door and he said in a very loud voice for him ‘do you want those miniatures?’ I nodded my head to say yes and he led me into the kitchen and then he gave me three miniature bottles of spirits and said ‘do you want the rest?’ When I first walked into the house, the door to the living room was closed… Ian went into the living room and I waited in the kitchen. I waited about a minute or two then suddenly I heard hell of a scream; it sounded like a woman, really high-pitched. Then the screams carried on one after another, really loud. Then I heard Myra shout, ‘Dave, help him’ very loud. When I ran in I just stood inside the living room and I saw a young lad. He was lying with his head and shoulders on the couch and his legs were on the floor. He was facing upwards. Ian was standing over him, facing him with his legs on either side of the young lad’s legs. The lad was still screaming. Ian had a hatchet in his hand, he was holding it above his head and he hit the lad on the left side of his head with the hatchet. I heard the blow, it was a terrible hard blow, it sounded horrible.”

Early on the morning of October 7th 1965, Superintendent Bob Talbot from Cheshire Police arrived at the back door of 16 Wardle Brook Avenue, he wore a borrowed baker’s overall to cover his uniform. He identified himself as a police officer when Hindley opened the door and told her he needed to speak to her boyfriend. Hindley led him into the living room where Brady was sitting, writing a note to his employer, explaining that he would not be able to go to work because of his ankle injury. Talbot explained that he was investigating ‘an act of violence involving guns’ that had taken place the previous night.

Hindley denied there had been any violence and they allowed the police to look around the house. When they came to the upstairs room where they had put Evans’s body, the door was locked and they asked Brady for the key. Hindley told them the key was at work, however this backfired as the police then offered to drive her to her employer to retrieve it. It was then that Brady told her to hand over the key. They found the body and arrested Brady on suspicion of murder. As he was getting dressed, Brady said ‘Eddie and I had a row and the situation got out of hand’. At this point Hindley was not arrested but she demanded to go to the police station accompanied by her dog, police agreed.

Hindley was question about the death but she refused to make a statement other than claiming it was an accident. At this point, the police had no evidence against her so she was released, on the condition that she returned the next day for more questioning. In the four days following Brady’s arrest, Hindley was a free woman, during this time she went to her employer’s premises and asked to be dismissed so she was eligible for unemployment benefits, she also went to the office where Brady worked, she found papers belonging to Brady in an envelope, which she claimed she did not open, which she burned in an ashtray. She said they were plans for bank robberies, nothing to do with the murders.

Whilst in police questioning, Brady admitted that he and Evans had fought but insisted that he and David Smith had murdered him between them, he also said Hindley ‘only done what she had been told’. When being questioned, Smith told the police that Brady had asked him to return anything incriminating such as ‘dodgy books’ which Brady had packed into suitcases. He said he had no idea what the cases contained or where they could be. He did, however, say that Brady ‘had a thing about railway stations’. Due to this comment, the police then searched all of Manchester’s ‘left luggage’ offices for any cases belonging to Brady.

It wasn’t until October 15th that police found a case at Manchester Central Railway Station, inside the case were nine pornographic photographs taken of a young girl, naked with a scarf tied across her mouth and the 16 minute tape of Lesley Ann Downey. When presented with the evidence of the tape recording of Lesley Ann Downey, Brady admitted he took photographs of her, however he insisted that she had been took to his house by two men who then took her away again, alive. It is important to note that Brady made several copies of the tape, the court heard a 16 minute tape, however other copies may have been longer, this was never confirmed or denied.

Whilst this was happening, on October 11th Hindley was charged as an accessory to the murder of Edward Evans after new evidence had emerged during the investigation which had convinced the police that she was also involved.

Police searched the house at Wardle Brook Avenue and they found an old exercise book with the name ‘John Kilbride’, this was when suspicions grew that Brady and Hindley may have been involved in more unsolved disappearances of other young children. Also, a large collection of photographs were discovered in the house, most of which were taken on Saddleworth Moor. This was when police decided to charge Brady and Hindley of the murder of Edward Evans as well as deploying over one hundred and fifty officers to search the moor, looking for locations that matched the photographs.

After finding multiple bodies, the investigating officers suspected Ian Brady and Myra Hindley of murdering other missing children and teenagers who had disappeared in and around Manchester over the previous years so continued searching for bodied, but with the winter setting in, it was called off in November. Each body they found was brought before a court separately and meant they were remanded into custody. They made a two minute appearance on October 28th and were again, remanded into custody.

By December 2nd 1965, both Brady and Hindley were charged with the murders of Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans, Brady was also charged with the murder of John Kilbride, Hindley was charged with being an accessory to the murder of John Kilbride, harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had killed John Kilbride.

On December 6th 1965 there was a committal hearing, where the charges were brought to them. The prosecutions opening statement was ‘held in camera’ which meant that it was not open to the public and press were not allowed to obsessed the procedure, the defence asked for a similar arrangement, but it was refused. The case continued in front of three magistrates over an 11 day period during December, at the end the pair were committed for trial in Chester.

The trial began on April 19th 1966, it was held over a 14 day period in front of Justice Fenton Atkinson. The public interest in this case was ridiculous, so to protect Brady and Hindley the courtroom was fitted with security screens. The paid were each charged with three murders Evans, Downey and Kilbride, as at this pint it was considered there was sufficient evidence to implicate Hindley in Kilbride’s death.

David Smith was the main prosecution witness, but during the trial it was revealed that he had entered into an agreement with a newspaper guaranteeing him £1000; the equivalent to about £20,000 in today’s money, for the rights to his story if Brady and Hindley were convicted, something the judge deemed as ‘gross interference with the course of justice’.

Brady and Hindley both pleaded not guilty to all charged against them, they were both called to give evidence. Brady for over eight hours and Hindley for six hours. Brady did admit to hitting Evan’s with an axe, however he did not admit to killing him, his defence argued that in the pathologist report, it was stated that Evans’s death was ‘accelerated by strangulation’, under the cross examination by the prosecution, all Brady would admit was that ‘I hit Evans with the axe. If he died from axe blows, I killed him’.

Hindley denied any knowledge that the photographs of Saddleworth Moor found by the police had been taken near the graves of their victims. Hindley admitted, after the tape recording of Lesley Ann Downey was played in the open court that she was ‘brusque and cruel’ but claimed that she had only been lie that because she was scared someone would hear the screams. She also claimed that when Downey was being undressed she was downstairs and when the pornographic photos were being taken she was looking out of the window and that when she was being strangled she was running a bath.

It was May 6th after only deliberating for a little over two hours, that the jury found Brady guilty of all three murders and Hindley guilty of the murders of Downey and Evans.

In his closing remarks, the judge described the murders as a ‘truly horrible case; and recommended that both killers spend ‘a very long time’ in prison before being considered for parole. He stated that Brady was ‘wicked beyond belief’ and the he saw no reasonable possibility of reform. He said about Hindley ‘once she is removed from Brady’s influence’ she may reform. He also said throughout the trial Brady and Hindley had ‘stuck rigidly to their strategy of lying’. The death penalty for murder had been abolished whilst Brady and Hindley had been on remand, so the judge passed the only sentence that the law allowed: life imprisonment. Brady was sentenced to three concurrent life sentences and Hindley was given two concurrent life sentences as well as a seven year sentence for harbouring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered John Kilbride. Brady was imprisoned in Durham Prison, whilst Hindley was taken to Holloway Prison.

Hindley almost immediately appealed her conviction, this was rejected. Hindley and Brady continued to communicate via letters until 1971 when Hindley ended their relationship as she had fallen in love with a prison warden Patricia Cairns. At this time, it was not uncommon for a relationship like this to happen. With Cairns help and a fellow prisoners contacts help, Maxine Croft, Hindley planned a prison escape, however it was stopped when an off-duty policeman found the impressions of prison keys and intercepted then. Cairns was sentenced to six years in prison for her part in the plans.

In 1978, Hindley wrote a 30,000 word plea for parole to the Home Secretary Merlyn Rees where she said ‘Within months he had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion.’

In January 1985, Home Secretary Leon Brittan increased Myra Hindley’s tariff to 30 years before being considered for parole. At this time Hindley claimed she was a reformed Catholic.

In February 1985, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Leon Brittan that his proposed minimum sentences of 30 years of Hindley and 40 years for Brady were too short saying ‘I do not think that either of those prisoners should ever be released from custody. Their crime was the most hideous and cruel in modern times’.

The full extent of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley’s crimes didn’t come to light until 1985 when they Brady confessed, until this point they had both maintained their innocence. Brady allegedly confessed to Fred Harrison, a journalist that he had also been responsible for the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, something that the police had already suspected. These newspaper reports prompted the police to reopen the case. On July 3rd 1985, a detective visited Brady but found him ‘scornful of any suggestion that he had confessed to more murders’. Police however, still decided to resume their search of Saddleworth Moor, again, using the photographs Brady and Hindley had taken to help them identify possible burial sites.

In November 1985, Brady was diagnosed as a psychopath and sent to a high security hospital, he made it clear he never wanted to be released.

In November 1986, Winnie Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother wrote a letter to Hindley, begging to know what had happened to her sun, Hindley seemed to be ‘genuinely moved’ by it. The letter ended with ‘I am a simple woman, I work in the kitchens of Christie’s Hospital. It has taken me five weeks labour to write this letter because it is so important to me that it is understood by you for what it is, a plea for help. Please, Miss Hindley, help me.’ A few days after she received the letter, police visited Hindley in prison and although she refused to admit any involvement in the killings, she agreed to help them by looking a the photographs of the Moor and maps to try and identify the spots she had visited with Brady. She did show particular interest in certain photographs, but she said that it was impossible to be sure of the locations without visiting the moor.

The security considerations for a visit as big as she had suggested were massive, there were threats made against her if she was to visit the moors, but the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd agreed that it would be a risk worth taking. The detective later said that he felt ‘quite cynical’ about Hindley’s sudden motivation in helping the police. He believed that although the letter may have played a part, that Hindley’s real concern was knowing of Brady’s mental state, she was afraid that he would decide to co-operate with the police and wanted to make she that she was the one to gain whatever benefit there may have been in terms of public approval.

On December 16th 1986, Hindley made the first of two visits to Saddlewroth Moor to assist police. Four police cars left the prison at 4:30am, the police closed all roads onto the moor and patrolled the area with 200 officers, 40 of which were armed. Hindley and her solicitor arrived by helicopter touching down at 8:30am, she wore a donkey jacket and a balaclava, she was driven and walked around the area. She was apparently nervous of the helicopters flying overhead and said it was difficult to make a connection between her memories of the area and what she saw on that day. At 3pm she was returned to the helicopter and taken back to prison. The lead detectives were criticised by the press who described the whole thing as a ‘fiasco’, a ‘publicity stunt’ and a ‘mindless waste of money’ to which the police had to defend their decisions.

On December 19th 1986, David Smith also returned to the moor and spent about four hours helping the police pinpoint areas he though more bodies could have been buried.

The lead detective continued to visit Myra Hindley in prison with her solicitor and counsellor. It wasn’t until February 10th 1987 that Hindley made a formal confession to the police, admitting her involvement in all five murders. However this new was not made public for over a month. Something I personally don’t understand, it was such a massive case and the public were invested the whole time, so I don’t quite know why they kept it quiet for so long when the public deserved to know the truth.

The confession tape recording was over 17 hours long, the detectives described it was a ‘very well worked out performance in which I believe she told me just as much as she wanted mt to know and no more.’ He also said he was ‘struck by the fact that she was never there when the killings took place. She was in the car, over the brow of the hill, in the bathroom and even in the case of the Evans murder, in the kitchen’. The interviewing detective concluded that he felt he ‘had witnessed a great performance rather than a genuine confession’.

Police then visited Brady in prison and told him that Hindley had confessed, at first he refused to believe it. However once he was presented with some details that Hindley had provided of Pauline Reade’s abduction, Brady decided that he too was prepared to confess, but he had one condition, that he was immediately allowed to commit suicide after, a request that was impossible for the authorities to comply.

During March 1987, Hindley made her second visit to the moor. She stayed overnight in Manchester at the flat of the police chief in charge of Greater Manchester Police and she visited the moor twice. She confirmed to police that the two areas they were searching were correct, although she was unable to locate either of the graves.

In April 1987 the news of Hindley’s confession became public. Hindley was persuaded to release a public statement, in this she explained her reasons for denying her part in the murders, her religious experiences in prison, the letter from Johnson and that she saw no possibility of release. She also said David Smith took no part in the murders, except that of Edward Evans.

On July 1st 1987, after more than 100 days of searching, the police found a body buries 3 feet below the surface, only 100 yards from the place where Lesley Ann Downey had been found. When the news reached Brady that Reade’s body had been found, he made a formal confession to police. He also issued a statement to the press through his solicitor, saying that he too was prepared to help the police in their search.

On July 3rd 1987, Brady was taken to the moor but seemed to lose his bearings, he blamed the changes that had happened, so the search was called off at 3pm, at this time a large crowd of press and reporters had gathered.

Detectives refused to allow Brady a second visit, so after a few days Brady wrote a letter to a BBC reporter Peter Gould, he gave some sketchy details of five additional murders that he claimed to have carried out. He refused to identify the victims and the police failed to discover and unsolved crimes matching the details he had supplied. Hindley told police that he knew nothing of these killings. He claimed he had killed a man in the Piccailly area of Manchester, another victim on Saddleworth Moor, two more victims in Scotland and a women whose body he had dumped in a canal at a location which he declined to identify. The police decided that there was not enough evidence to launch an official investigation.

He also told Gould that ‘Hindley has a crafted Victorian Melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially.’ He added that she had never been forced into any of the killings and ‘can kill, both in cold blood or in a rage’. Adding ‘we both habitually carried revolvers and went for target practice on the moors. If I were mistreating her, she could have shot me dead at any time.’

Although Brady and Hindley had confessed to the additional murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett, it was decided that nothing would be gained by a further trial as both were already serving life sentences so no further punishment could be inflicted.

On August 24th 1987 the police called off their search, despite not finding Keith Bennett’s body.

Then on December 1st 1987 Brady was taken back to the moors, but once again he was unable to locate the burial site.

Also during 1987 Hindley admitted that the plea for parole she had previously made eight years earlier was ‘on the whole, a pack of lies.’

During the 1990’s, Hindley claimed that she took part in the killings because Brady had drugged her, was blackmailing her with pornographic photos he had taken of her and he had threatened to kill her younger sister Maureen.

In July 1990, after Hindley confessed to having been more involved in the murders than she first admitted, the Home Secretary David Waddington imposed a whole life sentence on her. However she was not informed of this decision until 1994 when the prison services informed all life sentence prisoners of their minimum period they must serve in prison before being considered for parole.

In 1997, the parole board ruled that Hindley was low risk and could be moved to an open prison, she rejected the idea and in early 1998 she was moved to a medium security prison. The House of Lords left open the possibility of later freedom.

Between December 1997 and March 2000, Hindley made three different appeals against her life tariff, saying she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but each was rejected by the courts.

In 1999, Brady went on hunger strike after an alleged attack by staff in the hospital, however due to the Mental Health Act 1983, he could not refuse the treatment so was force-fed.

In March 2000 he asked for a judicial review of the decision to force-feed him, this was refused. He had said ‘Myra gets the potentially fatal brain condition, whilst I have to fight to simply die. I have had enough. I want nothing, my objective is to die and release myself from this once and for all. So you see my death strike is rational and pragmatic. I’m only sorry I didn’t do it decades ago and I’m eager to leave this cesspit in a coffin.’

In 2002, Hindley’s release looked imminent after another life sentence prisoner challenged the Home Secretary’s power to set minimum terms. Plans were made by supporters for Hindley to be given a new identity, however Home Secretary David Blunkett ordered Great Manchester Police to find other charges against her so she wasn’t released.

On November 15th 2002, Hindley died, aged 60 from bronchial pneumonia caused by heart disease at West Suffolk Hospital. There was a short service at Cambridge Crematorium, where none of her family attended. It was reported that more than 20 undertakers refused to handle her cremation. Four months later, her ex partner Patricia Cairns scattered her ashes only 10 miles away from Saddleworth Moor.

On November 25th 2002, the Law Lords agreed that judges should decide how long criminals spend in prison and stripped the Home Secretary of the power to see minimum sentences.

In 2003, the police began to search the moor again for the body of Keith Bennett, they read the statements of Brady and Hindley and studied the photos they had taken. Their search was aided by sophisticated modern equipment, including a satellite used to look for evidence of soil movement. They found nothing.

At the end of 2005, Winnie Johnson, Keith Bennett’s mother received a letter from Ian Brady claiming he could take police to within 20 yards of her son’s body but the authorities wouldn’t allow it.

In 2008, Hindley’s solicitor said that she had told him ‘I ought to have been hanged, I deserve it. My crime was worse than Brady’s because I enticed the children and they would never have entered the care without my role. I have always regarded myself as worse than Brady.’

On July 1st 2009, it was reported that the police had officially given up the search for Keith Bennett, saying ‘only a major scientific breakthrough or fresh evidence would see the hint for his body restart. Detectives also reported that they would never again give Brady the attention or the thrill of leading another search on the moor.

In March 2010, donations from members of the public funded a search on the moor for his body. Still nothing was found.

In August 2012, it was claimed that Brady may have gave details of the location of Keith Bennett’s body to one of his visitors. A woman was arrested on suspicion of preventing the burial of a body without lawful excuse, but after a few month the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to press charges.

Also in 2012, Brady applied to be returned to prison, reiterating his desire to starve himself to death. Then in June 2013 at a mental health tribunal Brady claimed he suffered not from paranoid schizophrenia as his doctors had maintained, but a personality disorder. His application was rejected.

On May 15th 2017, Brady died of restrictive pulmonary disease in Ashworth Hospital. On September 21st 2017, an inquest found that he had died of a natural cause and his hunger strike had not been a factor. On October 25th 2017, after a majority of councils in the UK refusing, he was finally cremated and his ashes were disposed of at sea.

Personally I think they are both evil, I don’t think we will ever know truly what happened on those fateful days, I think they both lied, they both tried to blame the other and make it seem like it wasn’t there fault. I find it so sad that Keith Bennett’s mother died, not being able to bury her son, not being able to lay him to rest. I think the game that Hindley and Brady played visiting the moors without actually assisting the police in finding his body made them even more evil. The fact Brady sent a letter to Keith’s mother saying he could find the body but the authorities wouldn’t allow it was just disgusting, how can he continue to play a sick and twisted game with someone, hadn’t he hurt their family enough without dragging it out and making it even worse for them.

I am so glad that they weren’t released and they both suffered when in prison with illness and finally death, they deserved it after the pain and torture they put those innocent children and families through.

I also find it very strange that they were both so in love, in love enough to commit these crimes together but almost instantly after being separated suddenly split up, to me that is kind of weird.

I pray that one day Keith Bennett’s body is found and he can be laid to rest in peace, now that both Hindley and Brady are dead, I’m not quite sure if that is possible, but I would like to think so.

I found this case and these people so interesting to search and look into, I have probably missed so much information, there is honestly tons for this case, I have tried to include as much as possible and all of the key dates, facts an figures. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

So today’s post is the first of my new Crime Series, all about crimes, criminals, evidence, court cases and everything else involved. These posts will be posted hopefully every Friday or every other Friday depending on how busy I am with my work, but they will be a lot more frequent than I have been posting. So today I am starting with JonBenét Ramsey, really hope you find it as interesting reading as I did researching!

JonBenét Patricia Ramsey was born on August 6th 1990 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA to her parents John and Patsy Ramsey. She had an older brother called Burke Ramsey. JonBenét was an American Child Beauty Queen who was regularly entered into child beauty pageants by her mother Patsy Ramsey who was a former beauty queen herself.

JonBenét was killed on either the 25th or 26th of December 1996, aged 6 years old, the police are unsure of the exact date. The official cause of death was asphyxia by strangulation and craniocerebral trauma, which is a traumatic brain injury. They believe there was a blunt forced trauma to the head which caused a broken skull and then she was strangled by a garrote (a wire/chord) which was found tied around her neck.

On the 25th of Decmber around 10pm the Ramsey family return home from a Christmas dinner/party at a friends house. JonBenét fell asleep in the car on the way home so was taken straight to bed. This is all we know in the timeline of events, until the next morning at 5:52am when Patsy Ramsey, JonBenét’s mother calls 911. The following conversation happened:

Patsy: Police

911: What’s going on ma’am?

Patsy: 755 15th street.

911: What’s going on there ma’am?

Patsy: We have a kidnapping. Hurry, please!

911: Explain to me what’s going on. Okay?

Patsy: There… We have a… There’s a note left and our daughter’s gone.

911: A note was left and your daughter is gone?

Patsy: Yes.

911: How old is your daughter?

Patsy: She’s 6 years old. She’s blonde, 6 years old.

911: How long ago was this?

Patsy: I don’t know, I just got the note and my daughter’s gone.

911: Does it say who took her?

Patsy: What?

911: Does it say who took her?

Patsy: No! I don’t know. There’s a… There’s a ransom note here.

911: It’s a ransom note?

Patsy: It say’s SBTC. Victory…… Please.

911: Okay, what’s your name? Are you Kath…?

Patsy: Patsy Ramsey, I’m the mother. Oh my god. Please.

911: Okay, I’m sending an officer over okay?

Patsy: Please.

911: Do you know how long she’s been gone?

Patsy: No I don’t. Please, we just got up and she’s not here. Oh my god, please.

The weird thing about the phonecall is the fact that at the end of the call when Patsy thought she had ended the call, you can hear her speaking, which for us is completely impossible to hear what she is saying or how she is saying it, however the police enhanced the audio and said that the tone in which Patsy was speaking completely changed once she thought she was no longer on the phone to 911. Kimberly Archuleta was the 911 operator on the phone and she said that Patsy immediately changed once she stopped speaking with her. She also said that she heard Patsy say ‘Okay we’ve called the police, what do we do now?’ There is also enhanced audio of the last 6 seconds of the call, in which police stated you could hear 3 voices, Patsy, John and Burke. Which is strange as the parents had said Burke was asleep at this time and had been the whole time. Apparently in the enhanced audio you can also hear Burke saying ‘What did you find?’ which is a strange thing for a 9 year old to be saying.

At 5:59am, just three minutes after the 911 call ended the Boulder Police arrived at JonBenét’s house. The family had also invited all of their friends and family around to the house. The strange thing is that police allowed this knowing it was a potential crime scene but did nothing to protect any evidence there may have been which is probably why nearly 22 years later, nobody has been caught for this crime. A lot of the evidence was contaminated due to the police allowing all of the friends and family in the crime scene.

When police arrived the first thing they did was search the house for any sign of a forced entry, which they didn’t. One officer named Rick French went to the basement door but when he seen it was secured by a wooden latch that was still intact he turned away and didn’t enter the basement, which turned out to be a critical error.

The police then decided to look over the ransom note as at this point they still believed this was a kidnapping. There were so many weird things about the ransom note. A lot of it does not make sense and that is one of the reasons that people believe Patsy had actually wrote it herself. It was left on their stairs and was two and a half pages long. The FBI actually told the police that it was very unusual for such a note to be written at the crime scene. In a CBS Documentary they timed 4 different people writing out the exact note and it took no less than 20 minutes, on top of that the 4 people already knew what they were writing so did it a lot quicker than the person who wrote the original and would have been making it up as they wrote it. They also wrote a draft before the final letter and they also used Patsy’s pen and notebook and after writing the note they placed the notebook and the pen back exactly where the Ramsey’s normally kept them, which is really strange considering the body was in the house at the time and they could have been easily caught.

The ransom note asked for $118,000 which is a weird amount as it is suspiciously close to the amount that John had received as a bonus that year from his work, so this would suggest it was someone either in the family or someone very close to the family who would have known this figure otherwise why would they ask for that specific amount of money? The ransom note also said to not call the police, which some people found strange that the first thing the family did was call the police as oppose to following the instructions to get their daughter back. The ransom note also had some really weird lines in it, starting off by saying that they were a group of individuals who represented a foreign faction which is a really strange thing to start a ransom note off with, belittling themselves oppose to asserting their authority and power as someone who is in charge of this situation. The other strange thing about this was the foreign part. Throughout the note, there were some complicated words that were spelt correctly but then some of the more simpler words were spelt incorrectly. Forensic and writing analysis professionals whose expertise is note/hand writing said it is as though the person writing it tried to come across as though their native language wasn’t English and they had wrote things like that on purpose. They also said that it comes across as though the person writing it has purposely tried to change their handwriting. At first there was a lot of effort put into changing the way in which they wrote, but as the note went on it became sloppy and the writing kept changing throughout. There were also some lines throughout the note which were from popular movies, which is strange. The police believed that the note was staged because it did not have any finger prints on and there was also a practice draft written with the pen and notepad from the Ramsey’s house.The professional forensics also said that it seems as though it was wrote by a female as there were a lot of maternal language throughout it, which is another main reason people think that Patsy wrote it. This is also why the police made Patsy and John give samples of their own handwriting to compare it to the ransom note. John was immediately ruled out of writing the note, however Patsy was undetermined as to if she had or hadn’t wrote the note as there was a lot of similarities between the way the ransom note was written and the way Patsy wrote, which is why a lot of people then started to believe it was her. A Colorado Bureau of Investigation report stated that ‘there are indications that the author of the ransom note is Patricia Ramsey’ however they could not definitively prove it. It is also strange to note that the ransom note was written whilst the dead body was in the house, I feel as though personally, in that situation surely the family would have looked around the house? Why would someone spend so much time writing a ransom note and the draft note whilst the body was in the house knowing someone could have caught them so easily?

At this time a forensics team were dispatched to the house. The police initially thought that JonBenét had been kidnapped, so therefore the only room in the house that was cordoned off to prevent contamination was her bedroom. No other room in the house was protected from contamination of evidence, which I believe is very costly in this case, as you’ll soon find out. Victim advocates also arrived at the house, as well as more friends and family. Visitors were picking things up, cleaning surfaces and walking around, potentially destroying any evidence in the house. John then made arrangements to pay the ransom, so at 8am Detective Linda Arndt arrived at the house to await the kidnappers instructions, however there was never an attempt to claim the ransom money.

At 1pm, the police then suggested John and his friend Fleet White went and searched the house one more time to see if ‘anything seemed amiss’. The first place John and Fleet searched was the basement. John opened the wooden latch that the Officer French had looked at and he found JonBenét’s body inside. When he found the body she had a nylon cord around her neck and wrists, duct tape over her mouth and her torso was covered by a white blanket. The strange thing about this was the fact that her hands were tied on top of her jumper so if she were alive when this happened she could have easily gotten out of it, which suggests she was already dead when her hands were tied, which is a weird thing for a killer to do after she is already dead. This is another reason as to why people believe it was just a cover up. John picked her up in a blanket and took her into the lounge and lay her down on the floor. Which as previously mentioned is huge contamination of evidence because so many friends and family had walked through the lounge, he had also completely removed her from the crime scene before it could be investigated by the forensics team, meaning all of the critical forensic evidence was disturbed. To me this is strange because if you can see your daughter is dead, surely you would do anything in your power to ensure the evidence isn’t contaminated so the police can find the killer? Someone then later put another blanket over her, which again is another massive contamination of evidence. I feel like the police handled the whole thing so badly and maybe if they had been more forceful and dealt with it in a more professional manor maybe the killer would have been caught and the case wouldn’t still be open almost 22 years later.

Just to note, 2 hours after the body was found, the Ramsey’s hired a lawyer, also once the body was found, John and Patsy stopped co-operating with the police, they refused do any police interviews however they did agree to a TV interview, they also didn’t tell the police or their lawyer about this. It is also useful to note that they did not actually do a police interview until three weeks after the murder, which is very strange as they were at the crime scene and were the last to see her alive and three weeks is a very long time to not be interviewed.

When JonBenét’s body was examined, the amount of DNA evidence found was pretty overwhelming, they found traces of two males and one females DNA under her fingernails, but it was too small and badly degraded to determine if it was blood, skin or tissue. They also found male DNA on her leggings and in her underwear. On the duct tape they also found fibre from Patsy’s jumper. However there was so much that was undetermined because none of the DNA evidence that was found was actually a match to any of the family or anyone on the polices suspect list. They also said that the DNA on the leggings could have been from the factory in which it was made and the Ramsey’s just didn’t wash the clothes before JonBenét wore them. They also think that the three different DNA samples found on her jumper could have been from one person, but it was so undetermined that DNA basically just didn’t help in any single way in this case.

JonBenét’s autopsy revealed that she had been killed by strangulation and a skull fracture. The official cause of death being ‘asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma’. Although there was no evidence of rape, sexual assault was not ruled out. There was no semen found, however there was evidence that there had been a vaginal injury and when the autopsy was formed, it appeared that her vaginal area had been wiped clean with a cloth. At this point, JonBenét’s death was ruled a homicide (murder).

The autopsy also revealed a ‘vegetable or fruit material which may represent pineapple’ which JonBenét had eaten a few hours before her death which was undigested in her stomach. Which is strange as her parents told police she had fell asleep in the car journey home so therefore she wouldn’t have had pineapple within the few hours before her death. Police photographs taken in the home on the day that JonBenét’s was found showed a bowl of pineapple on the kitchen table with a spoon. However, both John and Patsy said they did not put the bowl on the table or feed the pineapple to JonBenét. Police reported that they found Burke’s fingerprints on the bowl. The Ramsey’s have always maintained that Burke slept through the entire thing until he was woken up hours after the police had arrived. However this is the second piece of evidence to suggest he was actually awake at some point throughout the whole thing. Firstly the three voices on the 911 call and now the fingerprints on the bowl on the kitchen table.

In December 2003 forensic investigators extracted enough material from a mixed blood sample found on JonBenét’s underwear to establish a DNA profile. The DNA belonged to an unknown male, so this DNA was submitted to the FBI’s CODIS (combined DNA index system) which is a database that contains more than 1.6 million DNA profiles, however the sample didn’t match any profile on their database. In 2010, the case was reopened, new interviews were conducted and the latest DNA technology was used in the investigation. ABC News reported that there was no new evidence found. In September 2016, it was then reported that the investigation continues to be an active homicide case. In October 2016, new forensic analysis revealed that the original DNA actually contained genetic markers from two individuals.

An investigation took place focusing on John and Patsy but there were also over 1600 people of interest for this case. Throughout the initial investigation there were some critical errors including the contamination of evidence – previously reported, lack of experienced staff, the oversharing of evidence with the Ramsey’s and the delayed informal interviews with the parents.

Theories:

The first theory I am going to mention is a really silly one, so I won’t be going into it, but many people believe that JonBenét is actually Katy Perry because she looks like her and they believe she wanted to become famous so she reinvented herself. Which I do not believe at all.

Although the police suspected the Ramsey’s of the murder, they followed leads for intruders due to an unidentified boot mark left in the basement where JonBenét’s body was found. The suspects early in this investigation included the Ramsey’s neighbour Bill McReynolds who played Santa Clause for the family, the former family housekeeper Linda Hoffmann-Pugh and a man named Michael Helgoth who apparently committed suicide two months after JonBenét’s death. Hundreds of DNA tests were carried out to find a match to the DNA they recovered from her autopsy, to no avail. The evidence was assessed and Detective Lou Smit who had came out of retirement early in 1997 to assist with this case came up with the theory that someone broke into the house through a broken window in the basement, they then used a stun gun on JonBenét and took her down to the basement where she was killed and a ransom note was left. His theory was supported by a former FBI Agent called John E. Douglas who was actually hired by the Ramsey family. However something to note is that in the smashed window there was a spiders web in the bottom corner and this was undisturbed, so surely if someone had came in through the window and left through the window it would have been disturbed somehow?

Firstly I am going to discuss Michael Helgoth, so the police strongly suspected him due to the fact that he admitted to the murder on recording to a co-worker. He later apparently committed suicide two months after the murder, however some people believe it was not suicide and it was actually a murder as he had an accomplice in the JonBenét murder and they didn’t want him to speak out.

Secondly onto Bill McReynolds who Patsy hired to play Santa Clause in 1995 and 1996. It is highly likely that he was only questioned due to interacting with JonBenét in the days leading to her death. Both Bill and his partner Janet submitted hair, handwriting and blood samples and were cleared of any involvement in this crime, even though John and Patsy have always referred to him as a suspect even in their book ‘The Death of Innocence’ where they stated that John was highly suspicious of him.

Now onto Linda Hoffmann-Pugh, she was the former housekeeper for the Ramsey’s. Patsy said that she remembers her mother Nedra Paugh saying that Linda had once said ‘JonBenét is so pretty; aren’t you afraid that someone might kidnap her?’ However it turns out she was never really a suspect even though Patsy wrote in their book that she believed she was and that she thought at the time ‘if it’s Linda, it’s okay because she is a good, sweet person. She is just upset, she made need the money but she won’t hurt JonBenét’. Linda Hoffmann-Pugh later brought a law suit against the Ramsey’s for falsely accusing her in their book. She said she had never made the comment to Patsy’s mother and she believed that Patsy had killed her own daughter and wrote the ransom note to cover it up and John knew all about it and was helping her cover it up.

Also a person to note is John Mark Karr who was an elementary school teacher, he was arrested on August 15th 2006 when he falsely confessed to the murder. He made claims that he had drugged, sexually assaulted and accidentally killed her. He only made claims that were basic facts that were publicly known and he failed to provide any convincing details. The claims that he had drugged JonBenét were also doubted as the autopsy indicated no drugs were found in her body. No DNA evidence from the scene matched to Karr. There was also supposedly some photographic evidence that he was in Georgia at the time so it would have been impossible to have committed the crime.

Another theory is that due to JonBenét’s beauty pageant experience, she could have attracted the attention of child pornographers and paedophiles, where an attempted kidnapping had actually gone wrong and she had ended up being accidentally killed. This theory is supported by the fact that there had been more than 100 burglaries in the Ramsey’s neighbourhood in the months leading to the death. There were also 38 registered sex offenders living within a two mile radius of their home. A person to mention is Gary Howard Oliva who was identified as a suspect in October 2002 in an episode of ’48 Hours Investigates’. He was a arrested for sexual exploitation in 2016 and is a registered sex offender which supports this theory, however there is no actual evidence to support it.

Now onto family member theories. Many people believe that somebody in the Ramsey family is responsible for the death of JonBenét. As previously mentioned, the police firstly focused their attention on John andd Patsy. From their prospective, they didn’t see any evidence of a forced entry, they believed the evidence like the ransom note was staged and they also believe that they did not co-operate in helping them solve the murder of their daughter. The Ramsey’s have always denied involvement and have said that they were only reluctant in helping the police as they thought all fingers would be pointed at them and the police wouldn’t focus on the intruder who had actually committed the crime.

One theory is that Patsy had got mad and hit JonBenét when she wet the bed and after thinking she was already dead she strangled her to cover it up. She had no known history of uncontrollable anger. Burke, JonBenét’s brother also said that they didn’t get spanked and their parents had never laid a hand on either of them.

Onto Burke himself, he was nine years old at the time of the death and he was interviewed by investigators at least three times. A child psychologist said that the first two interviews did not raise any concerns about Burke and that it appeared the Ramsey’s had ‘healthy, caring family relationships’. Burke was never classed as a suspect by investigators as they reiterated many times. However one theory is that Burke was eating the pineapple that was found in the kitchen and then JonBenét went up to him and stole some pineapple out of the bowl which made Burke mad so he hit her on the head with a flash light. This is supported by the fact that police believe the blunt force trauma was caused by a flash light that they found, but something strange about this is nobody in or out of the Ramsey family claimed the flash light was theirs so it is literally just a random flash light that nobody owns. This is also supported by the fact that a year before, Burke got mad at JonBenét and hit her with a golf club which left a scar on her face meaning it is not out of character to act out and hit his sister when he got mad. Within the Burke theory there are two linking theories, one is that the hit to the head with the flash light actually killed JonBenét and the asphyxiation was staged. The second theory is that the head trauma knocked her out but her parents thought she was dead so they strangled her and that killed her. This theory is believed because people think that their parents didn’t want to lose both of their children and this is why they helped to stage the rest of the murder. Another supporting factor is that when JonBenét’s body was investigated they found two dots on her neck which were believed to have been made by a taser however when investigating this and trying to recreate these marks with a taser they couldn’t, however the dots did match up to a toy train set that Burke had and was found near the body. Some people believe that he used the train to prod her to try and wake her up after he had hit her. Another piece of evidence against him is a more recent interview he did, his first one, with Dr Phil, where he is just smiling throughout the whole thing, making people ask the question why would you be smiling when you’re talking about your sisters death? People believe he was smiling because he knows he did it and he has gotten away with it. However other people believe he was smiling because he felt uncomfortable and awkward as this was his first interview. You can see more on that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89zlpxJB6fs

For me, personally I believe that it is really strange that somebody would show up at someone’s house without any weapons, go through a window, without disturbing the spider web, go upstairs, kidnap a child, take her downstairs without her making any noise, kill her and then without panicking that you could be caught, you go back upstairs, find a notebook and a pen, practice a ransom note, then write it fully and then leave the notebook and the pen exactly where you had found them before going back downstairs, putting a blanket over the dead bodies torso and then leaving back through the broken window without getting caught on the broken glass or without disturbing the spiders web. In my opinion, I think the killer was in the house the whole time whether that be the mom, dad or brother. I think something definitely suspicious happened with Burke, why would his parents say he was asleep the whole time but there is evidence to suggest he wasn’t? I just think there is too much evidence against it being an intruder.

There is so much more to this case than I have included and honestly I could talk for hours about it but I have put as much information as I can so you can all get an overview of the case. To this day, this case still has not been solved, almost 22 years later. What do you think? Do you agree with any of the theories? Or do you have your own theory maybe? Let me know!